The dual religious life of the
anusim (Heb. forced converts) of the town of Mashhad in Iran began following a massacre in the Jewish quarter, known in Persian as the
ʿīdgāh (lit. place of celebrations, feasting place), by a hostile Shīʿī mob made up both of residents of the city and pilgrims. On that day, March 26, 1839, referred to as Allāhdād (Pers. God-given; God’s Justice), Mashhad’s entire Jewish population was forced to convert to Islam. However, the majority of this community of
jadīd-i Islām (Ar./Pers. new to Islam) continued secretly to maintain their Jewish faith for …

1. Middle East and North Africa Jewish journalism in the Middle East and North Africa began in 1842 with the Ladino weekly
La Buena Esperansa in Izmir (Smyrna). Between then and the end of the twentieth century, over eight hundred Jewish newspapers and periodicals were published in the region, many quite short-lived. Published by and about Sephardim and Mizraḥim, they appeared in regional, Jewish, and European languages, in a variety of formats and frequencies, differed great in longevity, and covered a wide range of t…